unlock hard drive from damaged windows system?

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my friend has a windows (98 I believe) desktop that has begun to die. he
cannot boot from the hard drive. so we pulled the drive and attached it to my
XP Pro machine with a usb enclosure so I can recover as much data as
possible. my machine sees the drive, and I can browse the directories, but
when I try to open C:\docs & setttings\user_name (which is his name) I get a
error: "XXXXXX is not accessible. Access is denied". He's here, and I have
his password. so how do I unlock this folder? I'd be willing to purchase a
piece of shareware, or is there a way in windows to do this? all the other
folders are ok and I can copy data from them.
 
urbnjckct said:
my friend has a windows (98 I believe) desktop that has begun to die.
he
cannot boot from the hard drive. so we pulled the drive and attached
it to my
XP Pro machine with a usb enclosure so I can recover as much data as
possible. my machine sees the drive, and I can browse the directories,
but
when I try to open C:\docs & setttings\user_name (which is his name) I
get a
error: "XXXXXX is not accessible. Access is denied". He's here, and I
have
his password. so how do I unlock this folder? I'd be willing to
purchase a
piece of shareware, or is there a way in windows to do this? all the
other
folders are ok and I can copy data from them.
Click to expand...


Log on under an admin-level account and take possession of the folders
(and their files). I have to wonder if the friend's host uses Windows
98 since 9x-based versions of Windows don't have profiles because they
don't have account security. Logging on only decided which password
cache file that user could access, but you could always hit Esc to
bypass the login and omit access to the password cache file. Windows NT
4 puts its user profiles under "C:\WinNT\profiles\<username>" and
Windows 2000/XP put them under "C:\Documents and Settings\<username>".

The only way you would not be permitted access is if the old drive was
using NTFS and that means it is NOT some 9x-based version of Windows.
It is Windows 2000 or Windows XP, and the partition uses NTFS so
permissions can be defined and enforced. The SID (security identifier)
assigned for those permissions on those folders and files is not defined
in your instance of Windows and why you don't get access to them.
However, as an administrator, you can take ownership of those files to
get access to them. Once you are the owner, you can check the
permissions allow you access to the files.
 
thank you, this is great progress. you're right that the file structure does
point to a 2000/xp OS on the rescued drive.

so: I'm an admin on my XP Pro laptop, and I've got the drive attached via
USB and I can see all the files except this one folder that's "denied". so
how do I "take possesion" of this folder on my computer?

thanks!
 
urbnjckct said:
thank you, this is great progress. you're right that the file
structure does
point to a 2000/xp OS on the rescued drive.

so: I'm an admin on my XP Pro laptop, and I've got the drive attached
via
USB and I can see all the files except this one folder that's
"denied". so
how do I "take possesion" of this folder on my computer?
Click to expand...


Right-click on the folder, Properties, Security. There are your
permissions. Click Advanced button and under the Owner tab you can take
ownership. Make sure to enable the option to apply the change to all
subfolders, too.

Start -> Help and Support, search on "file folder permissions". Gives
help on defining permissions. Search on "ownership" on how to take
ownership of a folder or file.
 
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